"Don't run me across the plank like a steamer trunk!" he shouted, as I
shot him dexterously into the cock-pit. But the wind was dying away,
and I had no time to dispute with him then.

The sun was setting above the pine-clad ridge as our sail flapped and
partly filled, and I cast off, and began a long tack, east by south,
to avoid the spouting rocks on our starboard bow.

The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the black
surf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tipped
wings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth.

Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in the
ocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in the
Atlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen or
unseen, always impresses the human mind--perhaps oppresses it. We were
very silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened to
crimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long after
the rose-tint died out in the zenith.

Our progress was slow; at times, although the sail filled with the
rising land breeze, we scarcely seemed to move at all.

"Of course," said the pretty nurse, "we couldn't be aground in the
deepest hole in the Atlantic."

"Scarcely," said Halyard, sarcastically, "unless we're grounded on a
whale."

"What's that soft thumping?" I asked. "Have we run afoul of a barrel